CHAPTER THREE
Summer went quick and the first few weeks of school seemed to drag. I attended Wells High school that consisted of Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years. I was a sophomore and so was Jen. She and I were in almost all of our classes together and we sat next to each other for the most part.
The first day of school was Thursday, August 30th. The bell rang loudly and I made my way from math to my last class; gym. I walked over to the navy bleachers, took a seat, and awaited my best friend anxiously. Hordes of people flooded into the gymnasium and soon enough I was crammed in the farthest corner in the back row of bleachers. Jen never showed. I assumed that she'd be having science class, because she wasn't in mine.
The girl sitting next to me introduced herself as Casey Tanner. I smiled and did the same. We chatted about the school, but the room fell almost silent when the bell rang. Again, the volume made my ears vibrate. My new teacher said we should call her Mrs. Reynolds. She continued to explain her rules when just seconds later, two boys came fumbling in laughing so hard that their faces were bright red. My eyes widened.
"Ouch. They're late on the first day. Not good." Casey muttered.
"I know one of them." I said, staring at no other than Jack.
"No way. Which one?" She turned to me.
"The one in the red shorts." For some reason I couldn't help but giggle when Jack walked past Mrs. Reynolds like nothing happened. He and his friend took a seat in the front row, grinning innocently up at her.
"Jonathan Daniels," she sighed. "what a pleasure it is to see you."
I laughed under my breath and so did Casey. Mrs. Reynolds continued.
"I will arrange you all into an alphabetical order, assigning each of you to a spot in which you stay in whenever I take attendance." She began to pace back and forth as she arranged us in to an orderly line. With Casey's last name beginning with a T, and mine with an S, we were relatively close to each other in line. I stared across the room and my eyes met Jack's. He waved kindly after noticing me, keeping his eyes on me for a second but turned away when his friend nudged his arm. Mrs. Reynolds came across me, placing herself directly in front of where I was looking, and wrote something on her clipboard.
"You have any gym clothes?" She asked me, her eyes moving up and down my form. I was wearing jeans and a blue cotton T-shirt.
I cleared my throat."Not yet, sorry." I said, shrugging. She sighed and went on to the next person. I looked over to Casey, and she was giggling at me.
Within the next five minutes, I was running laps around the gymnasium with her. We chatted about the new year and laughed at each other when discovering that neither of us could do more than one push-up. We played volleyball and my team remarkably won, and it turns out, I'm quite a good server. Each time I hit the ball, it would go straight over, and hit the floor on the other side with a loud smack. My team loved me.
Mrs. Reynolds yelled for us to begin cleaning up the room, because the bell would ring soon. And when it did, I grabbed my backpack from the bleachers, slung it over my shoulder, and started making my way to the library to meet Jen. Just as I pushed through the double doors, Jack stopped me in the hallway.
"Well, now you know one thing about me. I suck at volleyball." He smiled, stepping in front of me. Slightly amused with his choice of words, I took a step back and smirked at him.
"Oh come on," I said. "You weren't that bad."
He raised his eyebrows. "Thanks. So uh, how are you liking it? The school, I mean." He asked.
